Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Looking for fast, secure (not cheap) hosting for Wordpress

[cdragin]

I'm a designer who builds a lot of sites in Wordpress. The sites often need to use a lot of plug-ins, which can slow the site down. The sites generally are not huge or high traffic, but it is important that they be fast and secure.

I'd like to be able to recommend a web host to my clients that will allow their sites to be fast and secure (i.e., not shared budget hosting). If the host was also able to handle database backups and wordpress/plug-in upgrades, that would be a plus, since the clients are usually non-technical and don't have any IT staff.

Thanks in advance for any advice and recommendations.

[relichost]

Hi

Most reputable hosts backup Content and Databases, and use r1soft to do this so you get a number of days worth of backing up.

Also expensive hosting isnt always best judge of quality, i find hosts with good reviews and good uptime are the better ones to use.

Good luck with your search.

Thanks

Andrew

[cdragin]

Not thinking that expense = quality, just indicating that the client is looking for something with better speed and reliability than shared hosting.

[Hsunami]

Are all the plugins absolutely necessary? Regardless of host, a poorly written plugin can cause issues and make you hit your allocated resource limits.

Look for a fast host, yes, but also look at trimming unnecessary plugins.

Also, hosts generally don't update your WP installs and plugins. That's up to the user/webmaster. What if an update broke the site? Who will be held responsible?

[XelionOne]

Right, so you don't want shared hosting - but you want something with a little more power better able to handle some of the heavier loads?

Hmm... Sounds interesting. I agree with WickedFactor here - some of the plugins are extremely poorly written and this shows on the websites that use it irrespective of the power of the machine you're hosted on. I also agree with abtme with regards to the fact that expense is not everything - I see some UK hosts charge an absolute fortune (£10 per month for 100Mb of space) which is absolutely ludicrous and yet they don't get the 24/7 service that some people get for a third of the price with ten times the disk space yet they still have recurrent downtime!

If you want something powerful - I would consider semi-dedicated hosts. This would be the ideal step forward. However, I must stress that it is a rather large expense in comparison to shared hosting and for wordpress you don't really need it!

With regards to updates for wordpress - I know that we do it, so there must be plenty of hosts who do too. The main reason for us doing so is in order to ensure that our servers are secure, as all you need is someone exploiting a plugin or an older version of a script and BOOM the whole server goes down! Been there done that - not fun for anyone involved. We do however state very clearly when we update the website, we also relinquish any wrongdoing should the update break the website but we keep a nice backup in case the update goes wrong. As I said - if we do it - plenty of companies out there will be glad to help you! Just make sure to talk to them first and see their protocols to ensure that they aren't just clicking the upgrade button in the admin panel without backups etc...! That would be drastic!

On another note - you could get a dedicated server, and hire a small team to manage the hosting of your clients and manage their installs and charge them a fair bit for it too!

Hope this helps!

[TheJoker]

I'm with HawkHost now with WP and love HawkHost. I was also happy with Rochen. I want to try MediaLayer in the future.

[iperweb]

You should consider a good shared hosting (i.e one that keep servers light, and this often mean you have to pay a bit more) and offload contents with a CDN. Do you have a budget in mind?
Which location?

[FernGullyGraphics]

I think long term, I think your best bet will be to educate your users on proper management of wordpress websites. Some web hosts will do their best to support wordpress issues, however keep in mind that wordpress is a 3rd party software, therefore you cant really hold your web host liable if something were to go wrong with it. Most wordpress sites that are hacked are directly related to exploits that exist in wordpress and not the web host (just something to think about).

[J Gwynne PC Repair]

You will need to contact any prospective host to ask them specific questions about managing your clients website.

i also have to agree that while cheap is usually rubbish you can also pay too much and be ripped off.

i would look at uptime
maybe smaller hosts (who can offer the personal touch)


happy hunting

joe

[cdragin]

Wickedfactor - If a plugin wasn't necessary, I wouldn't install it, but the array of plugins is necessary to meet the clients' needs. I do vet the plugins best I can via the ratings on wordpress.org, and steer my clients towards paid/supported plugins whenever possible. And I install a caching plugin in the hopes of improving performance.

FernGullyGraphics - Most of my clients are challenged enough just to update their own content, and certainly have no interest doing backups and updates (they are mostly startups w/o any technical staff). I'll sometimes contract to do it for them, but then just outsource it anyway since I'd rather spend my time being a designer rather than a sys admin. I was hoping this was a service that some web hosts might offer.

iperweb - using a cdn is something that's come up before, with testing my own and other sites for speed. I don't really know much about it, or what expense it would entail. Depending on client I figure $20-$50/month for non-shared hosting. I'm in the U.S. (North Carolina).

XelionOne - Glad to hear that someone does offer an updating service. When you say dedicated hosts, do you mean a VPN? BTW, I've considered offering hosting, as a reseller, but as you can tell I'm not uber-technical and don't want to jump into more than I can handle. Could still happen if i find someone to run it for me!

Thanks to all.

[kpmedia]

Originally Posted by cdragin

WMost of my clients are challenged enough just to update their own content, and certainly have no interest doing backups and updates .

Well, honestly, that's just tough tits.
If that's their attitude, then they should not have a website.

[Kevin K]

Originally Posted by kpmedia

Well, honestly, that's just tough tits.
If that's their attitude, then they should not have a website.

There are many small business owners and individuals that need websites, but yet do not know how to manage them. Is that their fault? Of course not, not everyone is technically minded that owns a website.

If they do not have the experience to manage their website, there are many providers that would take care of the upgrades for them (a couple clicks for an upgrade) or explain them exactly how to make a backup and the importance, especially smaller based web hosts that can provide more one on one in-depth support. Not to mention there are services out there that cater to those types of individuals if it comes to that.

cdragin, you might even consider asking a web host if this is something they would do for an extra fee. Many web hosts do not offer support for 3rd party scripts such as Wordpress, but for an extra small fee a month they may make an exception.

[ProtoRobot]

There are many top hosting providers out there like HostGator, BlueHost and many others. By the way I'd suggest to start in optimizing a wp blog using plugins like w3 total cache etc.

[48-14]

Originally Posted by ProtoRobot

There are many top hosting providers out there like HostGator, BlueHost and many others. By the way I'd suggest to start in optimizing a wp blog using plugins like w3 total cache etc.

Those are bad suggestions and not all sites need W3 installed. You need to assess how many visitors the site has before using it...and it need to be set properly or you could cause more problems.

Originally Posted by kpmedia

Well, honestly, that's just tough tits.
If that's their attitude, then they should not have a website.

I have to agree with Kevin, the majority of website owners have no clue what html even means. This is why they hired someone to put build their site, and some also hire people to do updates. Also depending on their profession they don't have time to deal with this stuff.

To the OP;

1. the best option is to find a host that focuses on Wordpress. Most hosts won't help you with WP specific issues and will tell you it's not their job to help

2. almost all host can host Wordpress, but some hosts are not setup properly and will cause WP issues

3. have you tried coding some of the plugin functions into the theme which will cut down on the amount of plugins


If the sites have average traffic then you will be ok with a regular shared host until the sites become popular.

[fshagan]

Originally Posted by cdragin

FernGullyGraphics - Most of my clients are challenged enough just to update their own content, and certainly have no interest doing backups and updates (they are mostly startups w/o any technical staff). I'll sometimes contract to do it for them, but then just outsource it anyway since I'd rather spend my time being a designer rather than a sys admin. I was hoping this was a service that some web hosts might offer.

I feel your pain ... I had clients that had me develop their content for them as well (they would email a Word document and I'd cut and paste).

BUT, Wordpress is probably the easiest of the CMS to update; they just click a link in the Admin panel. The Core, plugins and themes are all updated this way, so there's really no excuse ... if they are doing their own content, they should be updating their sites.

Back to your original question. The typical upgrade path is shared > semi-dedicated > VPS > dedicated. Only a few hosts have semi-dedicated; it is a shared server with much fewer accounts on it to provide more shared resources. But the cost differential going from step to step can be extreme ... from $6 to $8 for shared hosting (at a quality host), to $20 for semi-dedicated, to $40 for a managed VPS, to over $100 for dedicated.

I'll bet that most of your clients would work just fine on a good shared host at $6 to $8 per month. I have a VPS at MDDHosting, and I'm transitioning most of my old hosting customers to their shared platform. At $7.50 a month, it isn't the cheapest shared hosting, but their sites are faster than when they were on my VPS.

When you get to very low pricing for shared accounts, you can have thousands of sites on the server, all competing for the same resources. And while there's no guarantee that higher prices equal better quality, there are some good, high quality hosts like MDDHosting that provide an excellent network and great customer service.

(Note: we can only recommend hosts we have actually used, so I hesitate to mention the others that are often recommended here ... others will chime in on hosts like MDDHosting.)